Reanimation
by KuraOkami13
Summary: He doesn't remember who he is, or what he died for. All he knows is that he's not supposed to be alive, and he's not supposed to be this strong, or this fast, or able to manipulate monsters. Of course, it's just a matter of time before Umbrella's new toy, as all their experiments and projects are wont to do, gets out of control. or, A Carlos Doesn't F***ing Die story
1. Our Hero Awakens

First dive into the RE movie fandom, let's see where this goes. Feel free to speculate identities; I have not been very subtle anyway. There will be small references to the RE games, but not much, I'm afraid most of my game knowledge comes from playing only RE4 and the wikia.

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Chapter One: Our Hero Awakens (To Pain and Dr. Frankenstein)

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" _Hey, my little birthday boy!" the older woman grinned at him, her joy and pride overpowering the tire in the wrinkles around her eyes, " Come, sit, eat. I've made your favorite for our breakfast. Your brother will be along soon."_

 _"Omee, my birthday is next week." he said, voice still cracking from having woken up._

" _I know, my bear," she replied, frowning a bit, "but we won't be there with you to celebrate it. So, we'll celebrate it today. Now sit and eat, before all my hard work goes cold!" she joked, pulling a chair out from their wood table with her foot while she turned and laid out plates on the surface and a steaming pan. He sat down, rubbing the sleep from his eyes._

" _Andrés! Wake up, little fox! Before we eat everything and have nothing but scraps for you!" she yelled out to the hallway where he had come from, and a series of thumping noises sounded from the shared bedrooms of the boys. Andrés was younger and shorter than him, with a head of hair more brown than black, like their mother._

" _Happy birthday, bro." Andrés greeted, grinning toothily at him with a thick gap in his teeth where one had fallen out._

" _Aye, you're both in on this. Should have know. Bunch of conspirators." he said, but he couldn't help smiling._

" _We love you, " his mother told him as all three joined at the table, "we just want to give you a good memory to keep before you have to go."_

" _You'll be able to come back, right?" Andrés asked excitedly, "Tell us all about fighting bad men, what's it like wherever they're taking you to? Being a badass?"_

" _Language, Andrés!" his mother scolded._

" _Yes, I'll come back to visit once basic training's over, before Umbrella puts me into an assignment." he smiled, "I'm sure they'll let me once basic's over, which should be no time at all. Should be a piece of cake in comparison to the Army."_

" _Just don't die." Andrés teased, and then flinched and apologized when their mother, once again, scolded him for joking about such a serious matter._

He jolted awake, with a sudden and constant bout of pain that burned him from the inside out and had him screaming. He couldn't remember his name, who he was, where he was, but he had a disturbing amount of certainty that whoever Andrés' brother had been, that he had died. Through the pain, he wondered if he might be that nameless brother. There could be no other reason for why he was in such pain that he screamed and cried awake.

He heard unfamiliar voices, loudly demanding for sedatives and securing someone down. He didn't care too much to figure out that the voices were referring to him, too distracted by the fire in his veins, his brain. It wasn't hard to figure it out anyway, when he was pushed down and strapped with thick belts down onto the table he was thrashing about on by people in white over-suits and visors. Amongst the pain, he barely registered the pinprick of a very sizable needle and the injection of strong sedatives that was pushed into his shoulder.

The pain subsided soon after that, but so did he, he realized, in a state of distant and foggy panic as he blacked out.

 **-o00o-**

He woke up again, this time with a strong headache, a deep resounding ache in his bones and muscles, and a vague sense of being in danger. When he opened his eyes, it was to lights far too bright for his headache to handle and he flinched. His arms and legs were firmly strapped down onto the observation table he was on. For some reason, he kept imagining that he was waiting for a bomb to go off. A literal bomb. He remembered fire and explosions, and a brother's broken promise to come back.

If he only he could remember a name.

"Lights to 45%." called a voice, and through his eyelids he was aware that the lights suddenly dimmed. They were still strong, but the penetrative brightness was gone, which soothed his headache a little. He opened his eyes, to see a woman with a short, neck length cut of blonde and brown hair. Her eyes were green with a ring of hazel, and two tiny white spots by her temples where she might have worn glasses too small for too long. She wore makeup, mostly a concealing coat over her cheeks and jawline to hide the scars of former teenage acne. There was a dusting of freckles all over her face and neck of anywhere between 70 to 90 freckles, and she wore a pristine white lab coat, a light blue dress shirt, and beige slacks. Her short heeled shoes were clean but heavily worn out, the sewing lines in the leather loose and scuff marks near the toe. There was a small black handgun, standard and probably fired no bigger than 9mm bullets, in a holster attached to the belt around her waist besides a small black pager that her lab coat supposedly concealed.

He then realized, with a sort of horrified certainty, that he was not normally supposed to be able to see and sense all of that.

She leaned partially close to him, "How do you feel right now?"

His voice cracked from disuse, parched and dry despite the IV feeds in his arms, "Pain… tired. Why...tied down?"

"You were thrashing and seizuring from intense pain, about nineteen hours ago. We sedated you and secured you down to protect you from accidentally hurting yourself and our doctors. Are you experiencing headaches and low amounts of pain in your body?"

He nodded, and she continued, "The headache may be a side effect of the heavy amounts of sedatives we had to give you. The low pain in your body is from the extensive surgeries performed on your body because of your injuries. We have you under pain medication, currently, but for your own safety it's mild. You may continue to feel low to mild pain for the next few weeks but it will subside as your body recovers and adapts to its changes."

She turned to a set of blue touch screens be his table's side, tapping the screen as all sorts of windows swept aside or sidled into view, information in all sorts of forms splattered across the screen. He sighted a bar with an electrocardiograph, an upright figure with points of interest lighted in colors. Her body concealed most of whatever the screens had to show, but he noticed that in the corner was a series of words reading 'Subject C-03-0201, Status: Awake' and another with a set of percentages, two with the different percentages of pain medication and nutrients in both of the IV feeds stuck in him. A set of numbers labelled with 'Administered' and 'Adapted' were to his left. There were four sets of numbers, two under each with one blue and one green, and there was a couple units of difference between those of the Administered set and the Adapted set, and both were in the high hundreds.

She was whispering to herself, and somehow he could hear it though he had no idea what any of it meant, mostly medical jargon about a subject. He assumed it was him.

"Alright, your readings are normal, healthy even considering the time since the surgeries. What do you remember?" she asked.

He fought through his headache, unsure of what she meant, but his answer was imminent and certain. He didn't remember anything. "Fire. Pain… Monsters. Gasoline." he answered. "Tell me?"

"You were in an automobile accident. A malfunction in the engine caused you to lose control of the vehicle. It flipped, and an explosion in the engine tore it to pieces, including you." she told him bluntly, simply.

It correlated with what he saw visions of, the fire, the pain, the smell of gas. It had to be correct, he decided, even as a tiny corner of his brain itched with a certainty that there was more, that the monsters he saw were left unaccounted for.

"I… died."

"You were indeed temporarily dead. Luckily, the explosion failed to damage your brain and nervous system, and most of your spine. While the operations to revive you were touch and go at times, it was an overall simple matter."

A story welled up in his head as she explained some more over all the things that had been covered to ensure his revival from death, a story of a man with no moral limitations who took lightning and metal to stitch the parts of the dead together to create a monster. He couldn't recall a title, but he was sure that he remembered that the creature's existence was one marked of eternal pain and suffering, because of its creator defying nature with his abomination.

"I'm a monster."

"No, you're a miracle." she corrected, "You're living proof of the boundless and miraculous things that science and medicine can make possible, of what Umbrella can achieve. And soon, we're going to see what truly miraculous things you can do."

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Feel free to leave me a review or PM me with thoughts, questions, and comments! I love any and all feedback!

-KO13


	2. Wiggle Your Big Toe

Feel free to speculate identities; I have not been very subtle anyway. There will be small references to the RE games.

Chapter Two: Wiggle Your Big Toe (In the Words of Beatrix Kiddo)

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 _"You're not happy with this, are you?" he asked, watching his father grip the steering wheel with whitened knuckles and a stern, brooding expression carved into his aged, bearded face. He was a little older now too, a little_

 _"No. But we've had time to figure out that I can't stop what you choose to do. And I certainly can't stop them." his father answered tensely. He looked at the way the older, pepper haired man stared angrily, helplessly at the road as they drove to the recruitment office. He had a small folder with his personal information, hospital records, military service certificates, and identification tucked beneath his folded arms._

 _"You don't trust them." he sighed. Figures his dad wouldn't. "It's a pharmaceutical company, Papai, not a draft into Médici's personal attack dog squad." he told him._

 _"Son, don't even joke about that. Médici was a monster." his father said curtly. He had to remind himself that he had been too young to remember all that his father had seen during those dark days where Brazil had come under authoritarian rule, before their family had moved to the U.S.. Maybe if he bothered to remember, he'd understand better why his father stressed over his recruitment, "And if they're a pharmaceutical company, why do they need personal military force?" he pointedly asked, harumphing. "It's nonsensical, and it sounds suspicious."_

 _"We've been over this." he groaned, "The U.B.C.F. is for rescuing people. You know, when something dangerous breaks out?"_

 _"Then why do they need it to be a military force?" his father snapped, then sighing, "History, son. There has never been any good come from a big name that has it's own personal army. Pharmacy company regardless."_

 _He growled, "Then why let me go if you hate it so much?"_

 _His father was quiet for a moment,frowning deeper and deeper in thought. He growled back, "Because I love you, and I know if I try to stop you, you'll run away again." He resumed silence for a few minutes as they turned a lane, slowing and stopping more now that they had come upon the city limits._

 _"Your mother and I've seen big names create their own guns, so many times, son, so many times, and it has never ended without blood being spilled." he said gravely. He read the undercurrent in his phrase, the worry and anxiety in his father's words for him._

 _"Papai, I'll be careful. I promise." he said simply, kindly, "I'm not so stupid anymore. I can take of myself now too."_

 _"I know. I know." his father said, lips turning up just a bit into a sardonic, sad smile, "You're not so little anymore."_

When he awoke, the lights seemed to catch the minute movement of his head jerking awake and enlightened the room. The operation table had been replaced with a cot and a headrest, though he still remained in the recovery room. The IVs were ever constant, with a nurse who had snuck in every once in a while to replace the emptied bags. Despite how sneaky they had tried to be, the quietness and softness of their feet and coats, he still jolted awake to every intrusion.

Nurse intrusions weren't the only thing that woke him up, unfortunately. He was feeling something, a lot of somethings actually, in all sorts of directions around him. It was mostly this sick feeling, a pang in his brain pointing at directions, telling him that something sick was nearby. Then there was the whispers of voices. They were tiny and faint, and he never understood the words, only that most of them sounded harsh and muffled and distant.

He didn't sleep much that night.

"If this continues, we'll be able to take you off the pain medications today." she said, impressed at the relay of information on his recovery plastered all over the large screens. "And after just one day since you've awakened. This is unprecedented."

"Why am I doing so well?" he asked. He had no memories of past injuries, no real understanding of normal recovery, but even still it all seemed seriously fishy. Unnatural. Freaky. Surely it could be no simple matter, bringing a dead man back to life.

"Umbrella has unmatched medicinal and technological advancement, so it's not so surprising at what we've achieved thus far. Still, knowing is one thing, and seeing the miracle at work is a whole other concept. Even with our advancements, bringing you back to life is a miracle in and of itself, and will probably prove difficult to reduplicate in the future." Birkin said carefully.

"Then why me? How?" he asked.

Birkin was quiet for a moment, scrutinizing the right words. She turned a little to regard him, and replied, "We'l need to see how you fare by the end of the month." she said, noting the confusion and panic in his expression and she schooled her features to by sympathetic and kind, "Don't worry. Just a few things I may need to acquire clearance for."

He looked down, hiding his confusion and worry, nodding to her that he understood even though he didn't. He flinched as his head filled with whispers again. He fought to hide his reaction, not sure yet if he really wanted to inform Birkin about them. He should be able to trust her though, she was trying to help him to get better. That's what doctors do, right? Still, his guts turned, making him feel sick. So, he stayed quiet. Birkin didn't seem to notice, anyway.

"Tomorrow, I'll be bringing with me one of my colleagues, a physical therapist. We'll be seeing how your body fares at moving."

"Walking?" he asked a little too quickly, too hopefully.

"Not yet, but soon." she assured him, "Baby steps, so to speak, to stretch and slowly strengthen your muscles. If we go too fast, we could accidentally damage something not yet ready to work." when he nodded stiffly, she continued, tapping the screen a few times until she was satisfied with her modifications.

"Anything else you feel you want to tell me?" she asked. He shook his head. "I'll be by to check on you again in a few hours. If you need anything, or feel anything strange or painful, don't hesitate to page for me." she said, pointing to the set of buttons next to his left arm. The blue, she had explained once, would send a message straight to her personal pager with his room number. A red one would alert the hospital security. The green one would alert the general medical staff.

Birkin left with a twirl of her labcoat while he stayed aloft the bed. The straps were still attached to the sides of the bed though they hung uselessly for the time being. He hadn't seized up and thrashed since first waking up. He still dreamed of fire and pain, however. Once the pain meds were taken away, he figured it would be a matter of time before his dreams spiraled out of control. He had gotten good control of his hands and arms relatively fast, but Birkin had kept the rest of him confined to the bed.

He had nothing to do for the time being except sleep, or stay awake and be bored.

...or...no, no, Birkin needed him to stay put or he'd only injure himself further. Coming back from the dead couldn't possibly be so simple an endeavor.

...and yet, he couldn't help but wonder.

-o00o-

There was a series of alarming thoughts in his head as the hours passed and he stretched out along his bed. He realized as he stretched and bent his joints that he shouldn't be this flexible. Birkin had said what she could about the efforts made for his recovery, but something deeply broken inside him kept nagging him, and nagging him, that he shouldn't be this flexible, or this painless, or healthy, or even alive. Something in him kept nagging that this whole process wasn't natural, wasn't normal, wasn't supposed to be this easy.

He had accomplished bending both of his feet and wiggling all ten of his toes when Birkin came back for the midday check up. She had no answer for him yet over her request for clearance to tell him the truth behind his recovery, but he felt secure that she would eventually get it. He was a moment away from telling her of his accomplishments when he surprised himself and held back. It didn't make sense, because she was just trying to help him recover, and he should be able to trust his doctor. But then again, a lot of things didn't make sense.

A nurse in white, average height, brown hair tied back in a tight bun, black eyes, tan skin, a little pudgy around her hips, and a pale indention of skin on her ring finger of her left hand accompanied Birkin, carrying IV bags; one large and filled with clear liquid, and two smaller bags, one filled with a cyan-blue liquid and the other seafoam-green. As Birkin spoke to him though, he noticed the nurse carried bandages as well. She pulled one of the IVs out of his arm, and immediately placed a sterile pad of fabric at its entry point. He put pressure on it with his fingers, as she told him to do while she continued to take down the pain medication. Then, the nurse wrapped a bandage over and around his arm over the cotton. While his attention turned to Birkin, the nurse hooked up the replacement bags on their stand, throwing the old empty feeds into a hazar waste can.

"You may experience low amounts of pain now that you're body is no longer being supplied with it. As long as you keep still and breathe through it, it should pass after some time." Birkin said, while the nurse packed up the pain medication feeds, gave him a new feed of nutrients, and left the room. "Are you still getting headaches?"

"A little." he admitted. "Not much, not as bad as they were."

"Good. If they worsen, page me immediately." she said, and left thusly. He observed the slowly depleting IV feeds, wondering what was the blue and green liquid swirling in the other two feeds. They had been in the IVs from the day prior too, the two colored liquids and the nutrients in the clear bag all being pumped into his body through the juncture of his arm then as it was now. He decided he could ask later about them, and he turned his attention to his relatively still body. Birkin had said that his whole body had been thrashing and seizuring when he first woke up, so he knew mobility was within his capabilities. It was just a matter of getting his body to wake up with him, to rediscover its capabilities. Unknown to the doctor though, he was already accomplishing it.

Within an hour and a half, he had both his knees able to bend and flatten on his cot. With some small amount of effort, he was able to draw them to his chest. He continued to stretch what he could, relishing in the small flares of relief that the stretching did to the creeping ache in his body. He dared not make an effort to actually leave the bed yet. Laying still on a bed with gravity flat against him was one thing, but standing up? Bringing his still healing bones and muscles to bear his full weight? No, not yet, even with his freaky fast rate of recovery. But he was going to be sure that when the therapy started that he was going to be limber for it and ready.

Besides, the small amount of exercise helped him ignore the whispers a little better, stopped him from thinking too much about his nightmares of fire and monsters and gasoline.

 **-o00o-**

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Feel free to leave me a review or PM me with thoughts, questions, and comments! I love any and all feedback!

-KO13


	3. To Tread a Little Forward

Feel free to speculate identities; I have not been very subtle anyway. There will be small references to the RE games, but not much, I'm afraid most of my game knowledge comes from playing only RE4 and the wikia.

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Chapter Three: To Tread Forward (And Only A Little Held Backward)

* * *

 _The camera window on the thick laptop went from black to buffering images of himself and the man beside him with a roman short cut of brown hair and blue eyes. They were both in beige colored camo pants and plain white t-shirts and dog tags around their necks. The feed eventually stabilized and smoothed itself out to consistent filming._

 _"Hey baby girl, it's your totally rad brother again. Okay, so, I was in the neighborhood, just hanging around the base, and guess what kind of blast from the past I ran into?" the man jokingly said to the laptop as it recorded them, "Look at this dweeb, remember him from high school?" he was pulled closer to the camera where it would better show his tanned face and black hair._

 _"It's Olives!" the man rejoiced. "The cool nerd kid that I shared detention with back in sophomore year!" he said, before being forcibly elbowed into, once for the nickname and once to move him out of the way._

 _"Hey Claire!" he greeted with a big grin at the camera, "Long time no see- actually I can't see you at all cause we're just prerecording this. Red here didn't bother bringing me in on your last skype call. Yes, I'll kick his ass for you, no need to ask nicely."_

 _"As if you could beat me." Red scoffed._

 _"Yes I could. Claire! Side with me here! Tell him I could beat his ass, especially now that I'm not a scrawny high school brat. I'm a big boy now, see?" he said laughing, dramatically bringing up his right arm and flexing the muscles that had developed from basic._

 _"Scrawny to brawny, don't be fooled Claire; he's still a total nerd." Red laughed, "I just haven't found a locker to shove him into, yet."_

"C-03-0201?" Birkin's voice cut the air, jolting him out of the dream. Really, it was more like a nightmare, of the usual variety. Monsters, fire, and gasoline. But there were these instances, a second long rapid snap of... something. He didn't quite know whether to name them as memories of the man he used to be before the accident, or as fantasies made by his mind in desperation for identity, even if fabricated. Whatever they were, they were his one and only reprieve in between the nightmares.

He yawned, lifting his upper torso off the lifted half of the bed. Three days had come to pass, and though he didn't know what the time was, he assumed the weekend was done with. The IVs had been removed completely the previous day, merely forty hours after he had been taken off the pain meds. His body felt sore at times, and his stomach had begun to inform him of exactly when it wanted sustenance rather than being sustained and quiet from the IVs, and his headaches continued to persevere in small but sudden increments, but the pain that it had been the first three days of being alive was no more. Birkin was pleased at his unnatural progress, always smiling whenever they made another discovery in his recovery, and tapping notes into the tablet she carried with her now.

"Did you have a good dream? Our cameras indicate you have frequent nightmares, and our sensors show that you don't tend to sleep very well." she said interested. He noticed there was a nurse with a wheel chair by the slide door, a short male with dark skin and even darker hair and bright grey eyes, wearing white scrubs with the usual red stitched Umbrella logo on his left breast. None of the nurses had found it pertinent to give him their name, but he recalled Birkin at one point calling this one Dante.

He shrugged, "Just more monsters, fire, and gasoline, the usual." he said simply. He didn't figure the small snapshots of not-nightmare material mattered. He could barely remember the details anyway. She nodded, making a note about the possibility of sleep aid prescriptions he might be able to take.

"Today, we'll be doing our walking exercises in a different environment." she said purposefully. He blinked, considerate and confused by what she meant, and he waited for her to elaborate, "Doctor Frost will be joining us in the new room. Once you're seated, we'll be on our way." she articulated while the nurse approached his bedside with the wheelchair. He wanted to gesture to the nurse and say to leave the chair behind. Despite that he had only started moving on his own during the last hour of yesterday's session, some overeager and confident piece of himself wanted to walk, unassisted, no balance beams or steadying hands. Wanted to kick up grass with thundering footsteps, feel whipping wind through his skin and hair, and run, run, run away.

He'd just have to save his energy though. The chair was placed right by his side, as he sat up fully and began the stretch. He bent his knees, then his feet, then toes, to make sure they would coordinate with him. Then he slowly swung up both legs over the edge of the bed. His toes touched the floor, cold like ice, tan and grey tile with a flat reflective surface and very little dust or dirt and he shifted his weight, slow, then stepped out with his left foot. Once it made contact, steady and flat on the floor, his weight moved forward onto it, taking his right foot with him. His right foot came beside his left, he stopped and pulled his weight to settle, first all on his left, then shift to his right, then both. Nice and steady. Then he slowly turned his facing while the hands of the nurse came to maintain his balance as he bent his calves and lowered his upper body. The nurse slowly lowered him backwards until he slid into the padded seat of the wheelchair.

Birkin and the physical therapist, Doctor Frost had helped him change from a white clinic gown into a white t-shirt and light grey scrub pants yesterday. It was a much more comfortable fabric to him, and the moments during the wardrobe change had been the first time he had gotten a really good look of what he actually looked like. It was one thing to look down a shading collar or at the IV-riddled arms by his side. It was an entirely different matter to see his bare body if only for a minute. No one had provided him a mirror yet, and all the screens Annette was so fond of had too bright a resolution to show his reflection. He didn't yet have the courage to ask for a mirror.

His skin was pale from death and lack of sun exposure, but it had a natural sun-kissed tan tint to it, and the wiry, coarse hairs on his forearms and legs was black-brown. There was a whole manner of scars going up his body, some thin and long pink lines from the surgeries, some blotches of white from the car explosion that had killed him. It wasn't much, but it was all he had so far. He decided to later, when he was alone, that he'd have to see about the hair on his head, if he had any.

Satisfied when he acclimated, Birkin tutted to the nurse to steer him and they left the room. The door hissed closed behind them, and they had taken an immediate right outside. He found himself stuck in a very confusing and strange mindset. On the one hand, this was the first time he had ever been removed from his place in the recovery room and seen anything outside of it. The walls were almost a blindingly pristine white and the floor was the same flat and barely reflective surface of white and grey speckled tile. It looked much the same as the inside of his room did, and it disappointed him as equally as it amazed him to see something outside. The hallway was very long, going on and on and on until at the end of a one hundred and ten foot stretch, it finally ended with one left corridor and one right corridor to choose to follow.

They followed the left turn and passed more doors, a few rooms with windows to more operating rooms and rooms with chairs and tables that he could see into but spotted no occupants for. Everything was either a sterile white or a light muted grey. The only color was Birkin's pastel colored dress shirt and skirt, shoes, and the occasional red accent that he only ever caught on the logo of the nurse scrubs, and the accents on the steel panels on all the doors. They were numbered and lettered, and some had a card slot. There were no door knobs or door handles. Just panels.

They came to a door where the nurse leading him stopped the chair, and Birkin started rapidly tapping on the exposed panel. The door slid open with a quick and soft hiss, and when the nurse wheeled him in his jaw dropped. A row of polished steel treadmills met his eye first, two rows of twenty except for one that was pulled out and accompanied by two doctors. To the right, a line of weight racks by the side of several padded stations. To the right of that, further back in the room, were more complex weight training machines, in several numbers. Then leg and arm extension machines, weight presses...

The nurse and Birkin wheeled him to the smooth and polished treadmill machine and the two doctors awaiting. One he recognized from the previous day as the physical therapist, Dr. Frost. He was a pale, wrinkled man, with roman cut sand blond hair and and grey eyes with tiny inflections of blue. He preferred a beige polo shirt rather than the lab-coats, tucked into the brown belt at his waist and his straight leg white pants. His nose appeared slightly crooked and barely scarred in one place along the high note of the bridge, slightly pulled left, as if a vicious right hook had caught it and split skin and cartilage and it had never been set right.

The other man he didn't recognize. His was another short cut of dirty blond hair and light brown eyes. He had high cheekbones and a sharp jawline, and a very minute amount of wrinkles about his eyelids. He had on the same white lab-coat as Birkin had, ironed and bright bleached white color that permeated everything in the facility. A bright red tie cinched to his neck and an off-white button up was tucked into speckled navy dress pants that he almost mistook as denim were his impeccable eyesight unable to catch the differential shine, texture, and stitch-work of the fabric.

"C-03-0201, this is Doctor William Birkin, my husband. He's the overseer of our facility. He'll be standing in and observing while we go through the therapy session." Annette said smiling. She always said that word, he had begun to notice. Facility, not hospital. It shouldn't be as much of a bother to him as it was, but it irked him. Always facility, never hospital. A small detail.

"Hello." he greeted, to which the doctor smiled to him pleasantly. He was sure he was just imagining the predatory show of teeth in William's smile. Frost approached but a gesture from him stopped the doctor from coming any closer.

Yesterday's session had been a good warm up, of making sure he had tactile sensory and could move every normal joint in his fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, toes, ankle, knees, and hips. Frost had originally helped him off the bed and onto the floor, kept him upright and steady as they practiced steps, slow baby steps, with a length of foldable bars for him to brace his weight on.

As slow as yesterday had gone, even he was aware that the progress made exceeded what they expected and what was normal. His feet laid flat on the floor as he shifted to the edge of the wheelchair. He shifted his weight, bracing the frames with his arms and pushed off to his feet out of the wheelchair. Incredibly, his body felt no soreness or aches. He felt a sudden need to roll his shoulders, and he did so, exhaling. He felt tingles in his muscles, excitement at the prospect of self-sustained movement.

"Your notes said he was standing with assistance yesterday." William whispered to Annette, who nodded, pleased as Frost laughed at his progress and herded him to the treadmill. He wondered then why they whispered, if his doctors weren't aware that he could hear them as perfectly as if they were standing beside him and talking straight to him.

"You're incredible, you know that?" Frost told him as he stood, ready in case he needed him to dive in and catch him. He found himself tentatively smiling at the pale man, as he took another step, this time starting with the right foot, then the left. His feet touched the belt plane he'd be moving on, not quite cold but not warm either, and coarser to the touch of his bare feet than the cold smooth tile. It was a welcomed feeling.

"We're starting you at point-03 of a mile speed. Nice and slow. If you get tired while it runs, or dizzy, put your hands here," Frost said, tapping the large bar frames on either side of him on the treadmill, "and take your feet off the belt to the metal here." he pointed down to the steel frame by the belt, with flat space large enough for his feet to stand. He nodded, and the doctor leaned in to tap on the settings and buttons of the console in front of him. Suddenly the belt began creeping along, slow and efficient, and he jolted but started shifting weight and stepping along it. The first few steps were overcompensation. The steps after, though, were confident and paced as he matched the moving plane. This was not the shaky, unbalanced wobbling of legs of a toddler that he had experienced yesterday. It seemed that all he needed was to remind his body what it needed to do, and from there it was like pressing play after being paused in a movie. Like riding a bicycle. He didn't reach the bars, not once leaning for them.

"And walking assisted." she smirked. "I told you he was making leaps and bounds."

"Soon enough, he will be literally." William said. "When was the last administration?"

"It was in the last feed yesterday. We've taken him off the IVs now, so further administration will have to be injections, but I don't think any more will be necessary." she informed him. "His chemistry has since stabilized from the first day, no mutations or lesions have shown up in our body scans either."

His footstep faltered minutely as he listened to their conversation and Frost keyed in to ask if he needed to stop or slow but he shook his head. Mutations? Why would he be mutating, he wondered. He continued his slow trek forward.

"Excellent. At this rate, we'll be able to move him from recovery and start the training and simulations before the end of the month." William noted. Meanwhile, the subject of their conversation wondered what it all meant. Training for what? What kind of simulations? What were they planning for him?

"How do you feel?" Frost asked him.

He smiled, "Good." Frost laughed, sharing the sentiment. It did feel good, to be holding himself up, to be moving instead of laid restless in a bed or a wheelchair. No matter how curious the conversation between the Birkins' was, he could not erase the elation he felt as he soldered on the track. God, he wanted to so badly run though, to just suddenly take off bolting and to hell with going slow. He itched to go faster, to stop the baby steps of crawling to walking and just go. He wanted to feel his heart thump against his chest, the blood in his veins to roar and sing with the work. He wanted to feel really and truly _alive_ _._

"Take your time, don't rush. The bars are here to let you rest and keep steady." Frost reminded him, but giving him leeway to figure out his own body and whether it needed to stop or not. Yesterday he had needed Frost's steadying hands or the bars to keep him up as he stepped between them back and forth. Today, he knew with a strange but absolute knowledge that he wouldn't need them now. Instead, he feinted looking at the bars and assessed the black console. There were a number of buttons, some labeled in white, some not. There was a square screen where blue lit digital numbers showed him how fast he was going, in kilometers and miles. With no effort at all he thought back to the buttons Frost had punched in to make it power up, to select the numbers and the rate of speed.

An idea struck him. He looked to the Birkins, feigning asking a question. Frost followed his line of sight, and eyes leaving him just long enough for him to tap a number and the upper pair of two buttons with arrows. The belt shifted speed, picking up, and he shuffled only a little awkwardly before he was caught up to the pace in half of a second. Frost jumped, surprised and a little bit horrified to have turned a second away only to find his patient suddenly keeping a pace similar to a fast-walk, almost a half a step away from a jog, instead of the slow baby steps.

Annette's eyebrows shot upward in surprise at his small amount of mischief and the jump from unassisted baby steps to a walking pace that was actually almost fast enough to be a jog. William was laughing, more than pleased at the turn of events. He found William's laughter infectious, grinning wider and wider until he was breaking into a chuckle of his own as he exerted to keep pace. It wasn't quite a run, but it was close. He wanted to tap the buttons again, make the numbers climb higher and the belt run faster until he was running, but Frost was watching him particularly close now, worried he would overexert himself with any faster speeds. He was not going to get away with a second feint, so he kept the pace as it was.

He did not know for sure how long he kept the fast-walk pace, but not once since the beginning of the session did he lean for the bars. Partially for pride, but partially because he knew he didn't need them, not anymore. By the end, when Annette said enough was enough and they slowed the moving track to a halt, he was only slightly winded, and his skin felt only a little damp with sweat and exertion. Both Birkins looked ecstatic with the results of the day, though, and that was the end of it. Frost looked him over, asked him questions of how he felt, worried about overexertion. All he cared about though was the pumping of his pulse, how his body felt no pain yet burned with the exercise, and how it itched like crazy to keep going, go faster, go harder.

Annette seemed to tune into his mood, and assured him that tomorrow they would come back and push him for longer, faster perhaps too. He felt wired and impatient then, and suddenly felt like panicking when they brought the wheelchair near for him to sit back in.

"Can...can I walk back to the room?" he asked, eyes wide and zeroed in on the wheelchair. There wasn't much of a way to explain it, but suddenly the device was offensive and terrifying all at once. In that one moment, it no longer looked like a plain wheelchair meant to help him and keep him from stretching too far. He had the irrational fear right then that all of his work to become mobile and independent and standing on his two feet would be shattered apart and taken away from him if he sat in it. That all the progress to bring him back to life would irrevocably reverse back into a spiral of pain and death. He could hear the whispers again.

Unaware of his inner turmoil, Annette smiled and shook her head, "Not today. Tomorrow, maybe. We can't risk you overstretching yourself. One step forward, one step back, you understand."

For the first time, he found himself wanting to run _away_.

* * *

Okay, so I noticed that at the end of the first movie, they had Jason Isaacs playing an uncredited doctor who ordered for Alice and Matt to be taken and for Matt to be put into the Nemesis program. And the RE wiki says he was originally intended to return in the second and third movie as William Birkin from the games, as the head of the Alice and Nemesis projects. But for whatever reason he couldn't stay on, so instead the movie scrapped his character and created Iain Glen's character Dr. Isaacs to fulfill the role. So, I kinda figured that it'd still fit within the movieverse to say that Birkin was originally in charge of the projects before Isaacs replaced him and Birkin moved to other projects OR that maybe Birkin was head for Nemesis while Isaacs took on Alice.

Feel free to leave me a review or PM me with thoughts, questions, and comments! I love any and all feedback!

-KO13


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